THE DAY AFTER
The day of judgment has its drawbacks, but it is the day after that
really hurts. The first shock numbs. It is when the nipping pain
begins, the remorseless pain too cruel to kill, that the sinner takes
the full measure of his punishment.
On the day of Forbes' departure, Agatha ate her evening meal as usual
and went to bed at eight o'clock. She slept heavily till midnight,
roused and speedily dozed off again, but now to be the victim of
torturing dreams.
Years before a pet dog of Howard's had become old and sickly and
Agatha's father had decided it must be killed. He had attempted to
shoot the animal in its sleep, but his nervousness had caused him to
miss his aim. It had taken three shots to finish the business. Agatha
had come upon the scene just in time to see the look the dying brute
turned on its idolized master, and the incident had stamped itself on
her memory as the supreme tragedy in her experience. She invariably
dreamed of it when feverish and ill. This night she underwent the
familiar agony with a difference. In the grotesque necromancy of the
dream-world, the wounded dog had become Forbes, turning his stricken
gaze upon the friend who had done him to death. She woke in a cold
sweat and did not sleep again.
At four o'clock she was up and cleaning house as the one adequate
antidote for the remorseful thoughts that threatened to wreck her
reason. She worked furiously all the morning, barely stopping to eat.
Miss Finch watched her from a distance, heart-wrung and afraid, but
knowing from experience that at certain crises Agatha was best left
to herself. Howard, with the characteristic masculine reluctance to
witness suffering out of his power to relieve, took his fishing rod and
departed for a day of his favorite sport.
About two o'clock in the afternoon, Ridgeley Warren came strolling
up the driveway between the rows of stately trees which made the
battered old house at the end of the avenue appear an anti-climax,
and so reached her unheralded. Agatha had thrown a braided rug across
the clothes-line and was beating it as if she had a personal spite
against each individual rag. The sun was full on her hair and despite
her menial occupation, she seemed to him a splendid figure, furiously
vital, crowned with light. Excitement whipped up his pulses as he left
the driveway and walked across the grass in her direction, but when
near enough to make his voice heard above the volley of blows, he only
said nonchalantly, "Good afternoon, Hephzibah."
Agatha turned and stood panting. She had been working at high pressure
since daybreak, and close inspection revealed not a masquerading
goddess but a tired, bedraggled girl. Her hair had slipped from the
restraining pins and a wayward coil partly extinguished one eye. Her
fair skin was clouded by successive layers of dirt. A disfiguring
smudge successfully effaced the dimple in her chin. With quickening
admiration Warren realized that this soiled and disheveled apparition
still had a distinct claim to beauty.
"Hard at work, I see, Hephzibah." He stood with his hands in his
pockets, immaculate in his light summer clothing, and as always he
roused her to defiance.
"My name is Kent. Please use it."
"I'm ready to call you anything you please, my dear spitfire. Only
remember that it's not my fault that I've always thought of you as
Hephzibah."
Agatha glared at him. His presence restored her poise. She realized
that as an antidote Warren was better than a thousand years of
house-cleaning.
"I don't know why you should think of me as Hephzibah or anything else.
I don't know why you shouldn't dismiss me from your mind altogether as
I should like to dismiss you."
"Out of the question, Hephzibah, or Miss Agatha Kent, if you like that
better. You see, you interest me."
"I'm sorry I can't return the compliment, but you bore
me--excruciatingly."
"To begin with," Warren explained analytically, "you are the prettiest
girl I know, bar none. And in the second place, I'm inclined to believe
you're the brainiest. If what they told me last night is true, you
ought to make your fortune on the stage."
Agatha regarded him silently and the antagonism died out of her face.
He was almost sorry, for it left her white and wan and rather pitiful.
"You know what a fraud I am, then?" she said wistfully.
"I know you're the cleverest girl of my acquaintance, if you could get
by with a thing like that."
"I suppose he simply despises me." Into Agatha's mind had flashed the
preposterous hope that possibly Warren's tolerant attitude toward her
escapade was shared by the only man who counted.
"Who? Forbes? Why the devil should you care what he thinks? Old Forbes
was always a bit of a prig."
Positive hatred looked out of Agatha's eyes. "Oh, I don't know. I
shouldn't call a man a prig simply because he objected to being tricked
and deceived and lied to. I suppose he has a high enough ideal of women
so that he expects a girl to tell the truth, just as much as if she
were a man. I consider that attitude a compliment, myself."
Warren was somewhat staggered. "Then I suppose I'm insulting you by
thinking you are a darned clever kid, and the rest of them a pack of
fools for making a fuss over nothing."
Agatha left him in doubt on this delicate point. The little hope that
had stirred in her heart had died almost as soon as it was born,
and the resulting anguish seemed out of all proportion to its brief
existence. Forbes did not share Warren's leniency toward her summer's
masquerade. He was one of the fools who condemned her. She looked away
toward the hills and suddenly her face twisted in passionate weeping.
"Don't do that, Hephzibah. For God's sake, don't cry. Can't you let me
help you, little girl? You need a friend I'm sure, and there's nothing
I'd like better than to help you. You've bewitched me, Hephzibah.
I lost my head over you when I thought you were an ignorant little
country girl, murdering the king's English every time you opened your
mouth. And the more I know of you, the more wonderful you seem. I'm
crazy about you."
Agatha's sobs quieted as she listened. When a woman has been humiliated
beyond a certain point, nothing can restore her self-esteem like being
made love to by a personable man. Warren's irreproachable costume, his
good looks, his convincing air of prosperity all helped in her struggle
against intolerable mortification. Yet though she dried her eyes at
his agitated request, and favored him with a faint, watery smile,
she thought of him, if the truth be told, less as a lover than as a
life-preserver.
Warren sat upon the porch and smoked while Agatha made herself
presentable. It took her some time and he was not sorry, for he wanted
a chance to get himself in hand. He had said very much more than he
had intended to say when he bought his ticket that morning, and though
he did not exactly regret his indiscretion, he told himself that he
had better go slow. Twenty-four hours earlier the name Agatha Kent had
suggested to him a benevolent old lady with a double chin, the chin an
entirely gratuitous contribution of his active imagination. Hephzibah
Diggs was a beautiful but deplorably ignorant country girl who had got
herself into trouble, like many another ignorant beauty. It was too
soon to propose to either. Yet as he glanced impatiently at his watch,
Warren realized that the charm of Agatha was her unexpectedness. You
never knew what she was going to do. You never could tell what she
might make you do, in spite of your better judgment.
Agatha's delay gave him the time he needed. She presented herself in
a faded gingham which nevertheless had the advantage of being freshly
laundered, her heavy hair wound about her head with a negligence
a woman would have interpreted to mean that to Agatha, her caller
mattered very little. Now that her face was clean he saw how pale she
was, and how dark the circles under her eyes, and this discovery was
responsible for an unwonted gentleness in his manner. He talked as a
big brother might have talked, and the instinctive, virginal defiance
which his unconcealed admiration had always roused in her, changed by
imperceptible degrees to confidence.
He asked her bluntly about her finances and she told him without
hesitation or evasion. He hinted at monetary assistance and she stopped
him midway, with an imperious tilt of her chin and a haughty stare.
"You are not talking to Hephzibah Diggs," she reminded him.
Warren sighed and changed his tactics. "Did you ever think of selling
your place?"
"I'm afraid nobody would want it, it's so dreadfully old and
tumbledown. And besides we've got to have a roof over our heads."
"You couldn't sell it here, of course. But there are possibilities in
this place. A small summer hotel ought to do well. Magnificent old
trees, fine view, convenient to the city." He studied his surroundings
with an appraising eye. "It should bring at least fifteen thousand if
you found the right purchaser."
She caught her breath and the sound brought his eyes back to her face.
What he saw touched him profoundly. Indeed he felt the smart of tears
under his drooping lids. "My God," he said to himself, "to have her
look like that over a paltry fifteen thousand."
"Then I could send Howard to college," Agatha was saying, breathlessly.
"Sure you could."
"And there would be enough to take care of Fritz--Miss Finch, as long
as she lives."
"I hope you'd do something for Hephzibah Diggs," said Warren gruffly,
to hide his emotion. "That girl has something coming to her, believe
me!"
Warren spent most of his leisure entertaining people, but he seldom
felt better repaid than when Agatha greeted this jest with a quiver of
laughter.
"I promise you she shall have a new gingham, perhaps a party dress if
the money holds out."
"Yes, that's what Hephzibah would want, a party dress," said Warren.
"And I speak for the first dance the first time she wears it." He went
on to discuss sales and investments, and Agatha hung upon his words.
He perceived that the practical line appealed to her. His tentative
love-making bored and angered her. When he talked of gilt-edged
first mortgages, bringing six per cent., she leaned toward him, her
reddish-gold eyes melting into his, and seemed ready to leap into his
arms.
The carriage he had ordered came for him at what he considered a
ridiculously early hour and he kept it waiting while he explained that
he would immediately take up the matter of the sale of her property
with several people who might possibly be interested. She let him hold
her hand while he protracted his good-by to an unconscionable length,
and he argued well from this, till she disconcerted him by saying
faintly, "Shall you see Mr. Forbes soon?"
"I can't say. The fair Julia may have hustled him away before I'm back."
"If--if you should see him," said Agatha, her lips white, "try to
make him think kindly of me. Try to make him understand that I didn't
realize that I was doing anything wrong."
"To be sure I will," replied Warren with misleading heartiness. "But if
a man is such a blasted fool as to need that assurance, it's not worth
troubling your little head about him, don't you see?" And then he said
good-by again and went off in an unprecedentedly bad humor, damning
Forbes whole-heartedly all the way to town.
Warren's call left Miss Finch pleasurably excited. For a man to come
out from the city for a few hours' talk with a girl, argued his
intentions serious. And Agatha's abstraction, the dreamy look in her
eyes, the irrelevant nature of her replies to the simplest questions,
seemed to imply a gratifying responsiveness in her mood. Little did the
innocent spinster dream that Agatha's absorption was due to calculating
the wisest expenditure of an income derived from an investment of
fifteen thousand dollars in first mortgages at six per cent.
But Miss Finch's elation was short-lived, for Howard came home with a
startling piece of news. "Heard the funniest thing to-day. Who do you
suppose has been getting married?"
To please him Agatha hazarded a guess. Howard shook his head.
"It's the last one you'd ever think of. Old Billy-goat Wiggins. He
married a widow out on the Jericho pike and I guess he's had six or
seven wives already."
Without attempting to correct her brother's exaggeration, Agatha cast
an apprehensive glance in Miss Finch's direction. Miss Finch met her
look with an air of resolute calm. At last the matter was settled. Now
that one of her lovers was out of the running, the only thing left was
to take the other. Her days of anxious deliberation, due to weighing
one man against his rival, were over, and it was a great relief. "Mrs.
James Doolittle," said Miss Finch to herself and blushed high. Well,
Doolittle was as good a name as Wiggins. "I b'lieve if anything, it's a
little more aristocratic," Miss Finch decided.
But as the evening wore on, she found herself disquieted. In her
thoughts of James Doolittle there was little of roseate illusion. She
saw him mentally as she had seen him uncounted times in reality, his
trousers patched and bagging at the knees, his shirt soiled and faded,
his hat suggesting that some predatory animal had taken frequent bites
out of the rim. "I do like a man to look neat," sighed Miss Finch.
She recalled too, the tumbledown cottage where James Doolittle had
kept bachelor's hall since his mother's death six years earlier, and
compared it disadvantageously with her present quarters. Romance had
spread her wings, and taken flight. Marriage had become a very drab,
prosaic affair. But there was no help for it.
Miss Finch retired to her room rather early and wrote Mr. Doolittle
accepting the offer of marriage made nearly two months before. It was
a prim little note and if her delay had been unflattering, there was
nothing in her formula of acceptance to restore the masculine _amour
propre_. She said that marriage was a very serious matter, and she
hoped they were making no mistake. She signed her name Zaida Finch, and
realizing that the compact signature would soon be replaced by that of
an unknown female, Zaida Doolittle, she shed some agitated tears.
The letter was sealed and stamped on the table beside her and Miss
Finch was lying awake wondering whether the tongue of slander would
be set wagging if she should decide on giving the Doolittle cottage
a thorough cleaning before taking the step that would make her its
permanent mistress, when Phemie came blundering up the stairs.
Miss Finch sprang out of bed and, candle in hand, appeared in the
doorway. She shook a chiding finger at the girl. "Don't make such a
racket," she hissed. "Everybody's been in bed for hours. You oughtn't
to stay out so late, Phemie. It don't look right in a young girl."
Phemie did not seem aware that she was being scolded. She was full of
silly giggles and pleased to find a confidante to share her amusement.
She pushed her way uninvited into Miss Finch's room.
"I never had so much fun in my life," wheezed Phemie in what she
mistakenly supposed to be a whisper. "Oh, my goodness, I've laughed fit
to bust myself."
"Where've you been?" demanded Miss Finch, eying her disapprovingly.
"I've been to a shivaree. Whole crowd of us went. We had horns and tin
pans and Ernie Cox took a cow-bell along. Oh, my goodness!" Phemie
placed her hands on her hips, and rocked back and forth in an ecstasy
of mirth.
Miss Finch's severity became more pronounced. "I think you might have
been in better business. Deacon Wiggins has been married quite a few
times, I know, but he's a good citizen and a pillar of the church."
"'Twarn't Deacon Wiggins. 'Twas Jim Doolittle. He just got married to
that cross-eyed old maid who used to work at Phelps' store."
When Miss Finch could get rid of Phemie she tore the letter she had
so painstakingly composed into the minutest fragments, promising
herself to burn them in the morning before any one was up. Innocent
as her intentions had been, the fact remained that she had written a
compromising letter to a married man, and she could not feel safe till
the sole evidence of her indiscretion had been reduced to ashes. As she
climbed back into bed she might perhaps have been excused for indulging
in pessimistic reflections on masculine perfidy, and the hollowness of
lovers' vows, but in point of fact her mood was eminently Christian.
To her own secret amazement she was chiefly conscious of overwhelming
relief.
The critical relatives of Deacon Wiggins' three deceased partners were
nothing to her. Mr. Doolittle's tendency to wear his trousers with only
one frail suspender as a support was no concern of hers, except as any
respectable spinster might venture to hope that his rashness would not
carry him too far. That good old name Finch, which had been identified
with her personality for half a century, would not be exchanged for any
unfamiliar polysyllable. Without knowing it, she had been shrinkingly
apprehensive of coming changes, and now everything was going on
exactly as it had before.
"If Agatha marries Mr. Warren and has a family of children," thought
Miss Finch, "she'll need somebody reliable in the house. And if she
doesn't get a husband, I ought to be around to look after her. And
anyway, nobody can ever say that the reason I never married is that I
never had a chance."
And so comforting was that concluding thought that even after sleep
claimed her as its own, a complacent, almost a triumphant smile,
hovered about Miss Finch's parted lips.